


the grief that does not speak

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Betaed, Drunk Cormoran Strike, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excessive Drinking, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Minor Character Death, Not Britpicked, One Shot, This Is Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 06:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “Cormoran, I know how this feels. I’m your partner, for god’s sake, no one could be more aware. But you can’t keep haring off to pubs halfway across town and making me come fetch you.”“I neveraskedyou to-”Even with his muddled brain he noted how the muscles in her jaw clenched, how her fingers tightened to a fist and relaxed. “You don’t have to ask me, Cormoran, to know I’m going to come for you anyway. Would it kill you to make it easier for me, next time you decide to do this?”





	the grief that does not speak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lindmea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmea/gifts).



> “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”  
> ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Robin slid up beside him at the bar. Cormoran sighed.

“‘Nother again,” he said, waving down the bartender. 

“Same for me,” she said, and he scoffed. 

“What’re you doin’? You- you don’t even know what I’m drinking!”

She looked him full in the face. “I know you’re planning to get soused, and it was my case too. Thought I’d join you.”

He rolled his eyes, accepting and throwing back the first half of his american boilermaker in a smooth motion.

Robin matched him, grimacing.

“G'back to wine,” he said.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she countered.

“Haven’t I got the right to a little self-pity?” he asked, raising the accompanying pint to his lips, pleasantly soaked in alcohol.

“Sure,” Robin said, “same as you’ve got the right to pass out in an alley and wake up without your wallet.”

“I’m not goin’ to-” His exclamation was bitten off when he followed Robin’s pointed gaze to the stack of empty glasses he’d been collecting.

“Cormoran, I know how this feels. I’m your partner, for god’s sake, no one could be more aware. But you can’t keep haring off to pubs halfway across town and making me come fetch you.”

“I never _asked_ you to-”

Even with his muddled brain he noted how the muscles in her jaw clenched, how her fingers tightened to a fist and relaxed. “You don’t have to ask me, Cormoran, to know I’m going to come for you anyway. Would it kill you to make it easier for me, next time you decide to do this?”

She raised a hand for the barkeep, who came much faster for the pretty woman than he had for the scowling, beat-up guy whose card was declined that one time. 

_Next time? Why did she assume there would be a next time?_ Robin asked for a glass of water to accompany her pint, and he did not.

“I don’- I don’t expect you to come aft’r me,” he said.

She only shook her head and sipped her pint. 

“It’s a good thing I came in the Land Rover, there’s no chance of you making it back on foot,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him.

“I _said,_ I don’t-”

“I heard you, Cormoran,” she said with a sigh. “But you don’t want to have this conversation now, I promise you. You’ll only regret it in the morning. If you remember it at all.”

“Oi, ‘m not that drunk,” he said, but his words mushed about in his mouth, and from a distant, self-aware place he knew she was right. 

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed. “Finish your pint, you’ve already paid for it.”

Cormoran savored his few last gulps, watching as Robin sipped her own pint and he reclaimed his card from the barkeep. He scribbled something that might have been his name on the receipt and jammed the card directly in his pocket. 

“My parking’s going to run out soon,” Robin observed gently, and Cormoran threw back the last of her glass as well, unwilling to waste perfectly good beer. 

“‘M ready to go,” he declared, and the moment his feet- his foot- hit the ground, he had the sickening sensation that Robin had been entirely correct. Or perhaps the sickening sensation was only the way the world blurred and swayed gently beyond his reach.

And there she was, beside him, slipping beneath his arm to provide an anchor in a world suddenly at sea.

“Feels like ‘m walkin’ on a ship,” he muttered to her as they made their way out of the bar, taking the two steps up to street level with the kind of care reserved for drunks and the elderly. “Never liked boats.”

Robin laughed. “Well, we’re about to get in a car at least.”

“Not better,” he groused as they stumbled up to the familiar old beast. Robin stood by as he managed to manouever himself up into the passenger seat before going around to get in.

She drove in silence, and Cormoran watched with heavy-blinking surprise at how deftly she handled the London traffic. Perhaps it was the pints talking, but she really was a brilliant driver, and normally he only liked professionals to drive him. But Robin was fine, better than fine. 

She stopped the Land Rover a few blocks from Denmark Street. “I’m going to park here, if you think you can make it that far.”

“Yeah,” Cormoran said, more confident than he felt. “Course I can.”

She parked along the street neatly, and came around to provide him with an arm to lean on. Again she tucked herself under his arm and walked beside him, and Cormoran curled his hand into a fist to avoid enjoying how well the curve of her waist fit under his hand. 

“Robin?” he said, his mouth moving without any conscious signalling from his brain, which was focused on controlling his wayward limbs. 

“Yeah?” she asked, panting a bit from the weight of him. 

“Robin, ‘m sorry,” he said, now contrite. “Y’r- a good partner, an’ a good- good friend.”

“Are we friends, then?” Robin asked, a bit amused, a bit confused. Cormoran, inside his head, could feel how drunk he was, did not want to be having this conversation; but the drinks had taken the reins, and he did not feel as though he was quite in charge of himself anymore.

“Course we’re friends,” he scoffed. “You- I gave you a key t’ my flat. That’s friends.”

She smiled and nudged him to lean against the wall while she unlocked the door. “Alright, sure. Friends.”

“Y’r right,” he went on, leaning back to look up at the foggy brown sky. 

“About what?” she asked, holding the door open slightly.

“I do rely on you,” he said. “I knew- you’d come f’r me.”

“Oh, Cormoran,” she said, and her sigh had a smile hidden in its corners. “Come on, the greatest challenge awaits.”

_Oh, fuck._

“Stairs,” he said, and he sounded pathetic, now. “I fuckin’ _hate_ these bloody things.”

“Well, there’s nothing for it,” Robin said. “Shall I go up ahead or behind?”

Either was terrible. Stairs were terrible. “Ahead,” he said. 

She went right up a few steps, waiting above him. “Lock the door behind you.”

He turned the deadbolt, and before he could think too hard on it, started up, clutching the railing for dear life.

“Oughta- call- landlord-” he said as he moved. “Have- a fuckin’- lift- never works- fuckin’-”

Robin waited for him at the first landing. “Come on, nearly there,” she said, and smothered a laugh at the daggers he glared at her.

Cormoran continued muttering darkly about the landlord as he made his way up to the office door, Robin now behind him. Seeing their names on the glass, he might have wept; he did not want to take the last flight. 

“Cormoran, come on,” Robin said behind him, her touch light on his arm. “You can’t sleep on that couch, it’s awful. You’re so close to your bed, you can do it. Just a bit farther.”

“Fuck, you’re right,” he sighed, leaning forward to press his hot face to the glass. 

“I’ll go up and unlock the door for you,” Robin said. It was a gargantuan effort to peel himself from the door and follow her. 

The last flight of stairs at last led him to his bed, which Cormoran fell directly into, leaving his foot on the floor to prevent the world from spinning. 

“‘m good now,” he said, eyes closed. “Thanks, Robin.”

“Oh, Cormoran,” she said, setting down her bag and leaning against the wall. “You’re not fine.”

And to his own horror, he could feel tears suddenly threatening; he was not fine. He had not been fine for some time. And apparently, all it took was one person acknowledging this for him to come straight to pieces.

“Cormoran,” she said, softly, understanding, and he hated that, all at once, hated her understanding, and her ubiquitousness, and her presence here in his flat. 

“Don’t,” he bit off. “Don’t- I don’ need that fr’m you-”

“Don’t need what?” she asked, still so soft, so careful.

“I don’ want your pity,” he said, vicious, “I don’t want your _help,_ I can man- manage fine-”

“But you’re not fine, Cormoran,” she said. “And we’re friends, aren’t we? You just said so, ten minutes ago.”

He covered his face with his arm, wishing- well, several things. That he wasn’t wearing his prosthesis. That Robin would go away, and stop asking questions, so he could lick his wounds in peace, and also take off his prosthesis. That he had two legs…

This last, unexpectedly, brought the tears to the fore, and his breath caught heavy in his throat. He didn’t _cry,_ he told himself severely, even as a tear leaked from his eye to soak into his shirt-sleeve.

“I can go, if you’d like,” Robin said. “Only I don’t think I should.”

And as vehemently as he’d wished she’d go anywhere else just moment ago, now, he could not bear for her to leave. He shook his head.

“No, go? Or no, stay? Cormoran....”

She was the only one who used his name, his full name. Even he thought of himself as Strike. 

He tried to reply, but couldn’t, his mouth moving soundlessly.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “Do you want some water?”

Cormoran nodded, too vigorously, making himself nauseated. He focused on breathing deeply, listening as Robin rummaged in his cabinet, filled a glass. 

“You’ll have to sit up,” she said, coming around and crouching next to the bed. He heaved himself up through sheer power of will, holding out a hand. Robin took it, wrapping his fingers around the glass, and it was so unexpected that he could only stare blankly at her for a long moment.

“Go on then,” she said, nodding, and he obediently took a sip, his stomach roiling.

“Thank you,” he muttered, knowing he most likely sounded resentful but meaning it all the same.

“You’re welcome,” Robin said, her mouth halfway into a bemused smile.

“I don’ wanna- I oughta-”

The words he wanted seemed just out of reach, dancing with the tip of his whiskey-soaked tongue. 

“You should drink your water and take off your prosthesis, and go to sleep,” Robin said. “If you can handle more, brush your teeth, as well, but I don’t know that you’re getting back up tonight.”

He groaned at the thought, and Robin laughed.

“Just the water, then. Drink up, and once you’re tucked in I’ll go.”

“Don’t-”

The word was out before he could think, before he could stop it.

“Don’t what?” Her voice was carefully neutral, as though she were talking to a client. 

He wanted to take it back. He wanted to have not said anything at all. But-

“Don’ go. I don’t want-” Cormoran scrubbed his free hand across his face, blearily. “Please. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Cormoran.” She sounded sad, and he hated that he’d made her sad. “I can stay, if you want me to.”

He nodded, again, unwilling or unable to admit with words what he’d been denying for so long. The glass in his hand began to tip, and Robin reached over to take it from him, and it was her hand on his shoulder that did it at last. With a breath that felt like the last gust of wind before a storm, Cormoran found himself crying, tears rolling down his face entirely unbidden. 

“Are you- oh, no,” she said. Cormoran felt as though the world around him had been muffled as for the first time in a long time, his emotions found a physical outlet other than violence and alcohol. Silently his shoulders shook as the tears fell faster, as though his body was determined to process as much as possible before he got hold of himself once more.

Robin moved now, coming to sit beside him on the bed, and wrapped one arm around him as best she could. 

“It’s all right,” she said, quietly. “It’s all right, Cormoran. Let it out. I won’t tell.”

Blindly he turned towards her, for once accepting the comfort that had been offered to him, and he could not see the look of surprise that flitted across Robin’s face as he almost collapsed against her, crumpling into her lap in a way that no man of his size ought to be able to do. 

She ran her bare fingers through his mess of curls, resisting the urge to shush him as he cried. She did not want him to stop; she wanted him to let this happen, so that he might finally begin to process everything he’d been denying he was feeling for the past months. 

The case that had gone poorly was only the catalyst, she knew. The dissolution of her marriage he had blamed himself for, although Robin knew quite well that those cracks had formed long before she’d ever met Cormoran Strike. But it had been the death of his Uncle Ted, one of the few bastions of normalcy and stability he’d ever had, that had brought him unmoored; it had been nearly four months now, and Robin didn’t think he’d taken any time off but for the funeral.

He had gone up to Cornwall with his sister, who had brought her husband and children along to pay their respects to the man who had effectively raised her. Cormoran was not close with his sister, though, and had come back tight-lipped and white-knuckled, refusing to speak of it. Robin didn’t know what he was going through, but he was certainly going through something, and what she did know was that she might be the only person in London who could see he was going through it. 

_You hide so well,_ she thought, running a hand back and forth across Cormoran’s shaking shoulders. _But you have to let someone in, sometimes. I’m sorry all you have is me._

Cormoran was lost in a haze of tears, unable to feel anything past the great towering wall of grief that he’d been avoiding so well until now. 

“Let it out,” Robin was saying, murmuring more for her own benefit than his. “You’ve held it all in for far too long. It’s good to feel things, Cormoran, even when they’re bad.”

A minute went by, then five; there seemed to be no end to his tears, his grief an endless wellspring. Cormoran, in some far-off corner of his mind, was surprised at this outpouring; he had not been especially close with Uncle Ted, not like Lucy, who had sobbed all through the service and burial. He hadn’t thought he had such a depth of feeling hidden away.

It was as though he had been numb, in shock, and now that feeling was fading away and all the pain was rushing back in. 

“Sorry,” he managed to get out, finally, once the worst of his weeping had abated. “Fuck, I’m- sorry-”

“No, it’s alright,” Robin said, rubbing the nape of his neck gently. “You needed to cry.”

“I don’t-” He could not articulate himself, voice choked with tears. 

“Grief is a process,” she said. “You hadn’t let yourself process yet, and you needed to.”

The soft press of her thumb on his spine seemed to keep him immobile, half-curled into her lap, and Cormoran began to be aware of how intimately they were wrapped together, his face pressed against her legs, the warmth of her stomach against the back of his head. He had one arm out across her, nearly wrapped around her legs. 

He didn’t want to move. He had not felt so secure in a long time, longer than he would admit even to himself; and this revelation, too, he did not want to admit, tried to reject immediately. This was violating boundaries, many of them, lines he had drawn with every intention of never crossing. 

But Robin had held him, had allowed him to cry without flinching, without any appearance of judgement. She had not grimaced or balked. 

If he was being honest with himself, which he had not done well at lately, Robin was the person who was closest to him. She saw him more clearly than he would have liked, but she didn’t turn away. And that was- unexpected, in the extreme. 

He was still laying half-in Robin’s lap, and she had not shifted or pushed him to move away. She was running her fingers through his hair, leaning back on one hand, seemingly content to stay in their awkward positions forever.

Now that the worst of the tears seemed to have passed, there was room for other emotions, like embarrassment. But he was also still quite drunk, and it was not a winning combination. 

“Fuck- I don’ feel-” The room was spinning, his head was spinning, his stomach-

“What? Oh, jesus,” Robin said, and almost before he could blink her lap had been replaced by a pillow and she was bringing over a bin. “In this, if you please,” she said, and she was so kind he could almost weep again. But his body had other plans, and indeed, he could feel his long-forgotten sandwich threatening to make a reappearance-

Robin looked away as Cormoran was sick into the garbage bin. This was a very vulnerable position for him to be in, and she was half expecting him to ask her to leave, despite his earlier wish that she stay. He was drunk, and full of grief, and he was not fine, and had not been for some time.

She knew, standing with her back to him, that should could not leave him. Not like this. _No one ought to be alone in times like these,_ she thought. _Even if they think they want to be. Maybe especially if they think that._ And Cormoran, despite his sprawling social network, was a lonely man. He spent time with people, liked them, but didn’t let them in.

But he’d let her in, time and again, even if only for short moments; Robin thought she might be his best friend at the moment, and knew in her own heart that he was hers. It had been inevitable, despite both of them resisting. But they had almost never been close like this, not emotionally, and she couldn’t think of a time they’d physically been closer than just moments before, with his head heavy in her lap, his hair wiry between her fingers-

Robin shook her head and went to get him some more water to rinse his mouth. He really was much worse than she’d expected, and her expectations had been low. 

“Here,” she said, returning with a plastic takeaway cup she’d found on his counter. “Rinse.”

Cormoran followed her instructions, his battered face looking quite pitiful in the hazy light. No, she couldn’t leave him alone. She took the cup back when it was empty, and turned away once more as Cormoran began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Would you like- something else to wear?” she asked, a touch frantically. 

Even in his drunken urge to peel away the clothing that was suddenly too hot, too constricting, Cormoran knew he ought to wear something, at least so long as Robin was there.

“No,” his wayward, petulant voice said. “S’too hot.”

“I know it’s hot, Cormoran, but please…”

She could hear fabric hitting the floor, and briefly closed her eyes, praying he would leave his trousers on. 

“You ought to take your shoes off, too,” she said, not turning around. _In for a penny…._

“An’ m’leg! Fuck m’leg,” he said, and out of the corner of her eye Robin saw a pile of folded laundry sitting in a small basket. There were a few undershirts, bless. She chose one- blue, she decided- and waited a minute or two more before bringing it back over to where Cormoran was now sprawled out across his bed, looking wan and washed-out and thankfully still in his trousers.

“Here you go,” she said, laying the tee next to him. Robin was trying not to look too closely, but the image of him seemed emblazoned behind her eyelids, the thick dark hair running wild down his torso, leading from his chest to his stomach to-

“Thanks, Robin,” he said, muffled by the fabric of the top. She breathed a grateful sigh.

“Of course,” she replied. 

“‘M sorry for crying on you,” he said gruffly, still tangled in the tee, where he wouldn’t have to look at her. 

“You needed to do that,” she said gently. “I hope- I hope it helped.”

“Yeah,” he said, settling into the bed more fully, no longer bare-chested. Robin saw, behind him, his prosthesis, laying on the floor, and noticed how his trouser-leg lay flat and empty; good, so he had been able to get it off without help. That was a bridge they would most likely never come to, and be happier for it. She knew how much it pained him for anyone to look or think too closely on his leg, or lack thereof. She didn’t think their relationship could ever recover if she had had to assist with it. 

“Do you need anything else?” she asked, seeing how beads of sweat had appeared along his hairline, how pale he was beneath his omnipresent shading of stubble. 

“Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head, then paused still. “Yes,” he amended, looking suddenly very young. “I don’t- I-”

Robin knew what he wanted to say, and knew too that it would hurt him greatly to articulate it, especially in this odd, off-kilter drunken grief-state he was in. 

“I’ll stay,” she said. “You’ve already asked me to.”

His sigh was one of deep relief. She smiled at him, this terribly damaged man who had been, in his own way, very good to her, when she had needed him. She could not do any less for him.

As Cormoran tossed about in the bed, arranging and rearranging himself restlessly, Robin tied off the bin bag and set it out on the landing to be dealt with later. As she washed her hands, she noticed that it was just barely gone midnight, though it felt much later; he had gotten an early start on the drinks this time. 

Robin pursed her lips, surveying the tiny, scant flat. She had promised to stay, but there was only one chair, and it didn’t look comfortable. She could hardly share the bed, though.

As Robin put her things in order on the chair, arranging the single blanket and taking off her shoes, Cormoran began to speak. 

“I don’t think I loved him enough,” he said, fretfully, drunkenly, and Robin did not need to ask to know what he was talking about. “I liked him, bu’ I don’ think I loved him, y’know? And y’r suppos’ta love your family. And he was my family. Bu’ he was Lucy’s family more’n mine, yeah? I think I loved him, but not like she loved him, and I- I- I think I shoulda loved him like that. But I don’t. Didn’t.”

“It’s all right, Cormoran,” Robin said softly, knowing that this was all something he would not want her to know. “Go to sleep. It’ll all seem easier in the morning.”

“She wanted me to cry,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard her, and perhaps he hadn’t. “I think she wanted me t’cry, and I didn’ and it made her mad. She thought- she thought I didn’t love him enough. And I didn’t.”

Robin sighed.

“Grief takes us all differently,” she said. “When my gran passed, my brother Martin didn’t cry for nearly a year. He got mad, though, lashed out at all of us, nearly flunked his year. It’s not always tears.”

As she spoke, she went back over to the bed, where Cormoran lay with his face mashed down into the pillow. She sat lightly on the edge of the mattress, reaching out to stroke his hair lightly. If he rejected her, nothing lost, but she didn’t think he would. 

He turned his face towards her, somehow slightly clammy and hot at once. There was nothing for it, though. She played with his hair once more, allowing herself to indulge in one thing as much as soothing him.

“You’re a human, not a machine, Cormoran,” she said, forestalling any further confessions. “You don’t have programming, you have emotions, and they can’t be predicted or planned for. You can only feel them.”

She hadn’t thought her months of therapy would come in handy for a moment like this, but she was glad to have the words. 

“I wish I loved him more,” Cormoran muttered indistinctly. “I wish I could’ve. I think I would’ve, if I could.”

 _If I could?_ That was an odd way to phrase it.

“You cared for him deeply, Cormoran,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he sighed, gusty and deep. 

“Go to sleep, okay? It’ll be better in the morning.”

“No i’won’t,” he objected, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Morning means hangover.”

“There’s that,” she said, smiling fondly where he couldn’t see her. “Rest.”

“Mmm,” he agreed, pressing his face down into the pillow he’d tucked into his arms. Robin had a bare moment in which she wondered what it would be like to be cradled like that, before blinking.

 _What an odd and inappropriate thought,_ she scolded herself. _That’s not how any of this works, you foolish girl._

As Robin got up and went over to the chair, Cormoran cracked one eye open to watch her. She really was going to stay, he thought with some wonder. He had thought she might go down to sleep on the office couch, but no, she was just there, within his line of sight. 

He felt oddly clean, or perhaps cleaned-out. Despite the hot, itchy feeling, and the knowledge he was going to have a massive hangover in the morning, it was as though there had been a dam built up in his chest, and his awful crying had washed it away. Like he was hollow, but in a good way.

He sighed again, feeling it come from his toes, as his eyes closed.

“Thanks, Robin,” he muttered into the hazy darkness. 

He could picture her face, her smile, as she replied, “You’re welcome, Cormoran.”

And it was this picture, not his uncle’s headstone, not his sister’s tear-stained face, but Robin’s smile that he carried into sleep with him, for the first time in weeks. 

Ensconced in the chair, Robin heard Cormoran begin to snore, and allowed herself to relax. In the morning there would be other things to deal with. But tonight he had finally admitted to needing help, and that was enough to start. She wanted to help him, and now perhaps he would allow her to.

They fell asleep quietly, as the clock ticked steadily into the new day.


End file.
